POSTED 29.8.14:
USA: RENDITION: Ten
CIA rendition victims urge Obama to name them in Senate torture
report
(Reprieve, link): "Ten victims of CIA rendition and torture
have signed an open letter to President Obama asking him to declassify
the upcoming Senate report into the program. Two of the signatories
 Abdel-Hakim Belhadj and Sami al-Saadi  were rendered
with their entire families, including a pregnant woman and four
children between the ages of six and twelve."

"The
cases Al Nashiri v. Poland (application no. 28761/11) and Husayn
(Abu Zubaydah) v. Poland (no. 7511/13) concerned allegations
of torture, ill-treatment and secret detention of two men suspected
of terrorist acts. The applicants allege that they were held
at a CIA black site in Poland. In todays Chamber
judgments, which are not final, the European Court of Human Rights
held, unanimously: in both cases, that Poland had failed to comply
with its obligation under Article 38 of the European Convention
on Human Rights (obligation to furnish all necessary facilities
for the effective conduct of an investigation);

in both cases, that there had been:
- a violation of Article 3 (prohibition of torture and inhuman
or degrading treatment) of the Convention, in both its substantive
and procedural aspects;
- a violation of Article 5 (right to liberty and security);
- a violation of Article 8 (right to respect for private and
family life);
- a violation of Article 13 (right to an effective remedy); and,
- a violation of Article 6 § 1 (right to a fair trial).

" Tony
Blair knew in detail about the CIAs secret kidnap and interrogation
programme after the September 11 attacks and was kept informed
every step of the way by MI6, a security source has
told The Telegraph. Mr Blair, the then prime minister, and Jack
Straw, his foreign secretary, were fully briefed on CIA activities
and were shown now infamous Bush administration legal opinions
that declared enhanced interrogation techniques such
as waterboarding and stress positions to be legal, the source
said."

"On a cold day in early
2003, two senior CIA officers arrived at the U.S. Embassy in
Warsaw to pick up a pair of large cardboard boxes. Inside were
bundles of cash totaling $15 million that had been flown from
Germany via diplomatic pouch.

The men put the boxes in a
van and weaved through the Polish capital until coming to the
headquarters of Polish intelligence. They were met by Col. &SHY;Andrzej
Derlatka, deputy chief of the intelligence service, and two of
his associates.

The Americans and Poles then
sealed an agreement that over the previous weeks had allowed
the CIA the use of a secret prison  a remote villa in the
Polish lake district  to interrogate al-Qaeda suspects."

POSTED 13-10-13:
EU-CIA: European Parliament: Press release: US-led
CIA rendition and secret detention programmes: impunity must
end
(pdf): "The climate of impunity surrounding EU member
states' complicity in the CIA's secret "rendition"
and detention programmes has allowed violations of fundamental
rights to continue unchecked, as revealed by mass surveillance
programmes run by the US and some EU member states, said the
European Parliament on Thursday. MEPs want Parliament's right
to investigate such violations in the EU to be reinforced, and
again urge EU institutions and member states to investigate the
CIA operations in depth.

MEPs are "highly
disappointed" by the Commissions refusal to respond
in substance to the recommendations made by Parliament in its
September 2012 resolution on the follow-up to the work of its
Temporary Committee on the CIA's alleged use of European countries
for the transportation and illegal detention of prisoners. These
recommendations are reiterated in this year's resolution. For
example, MEPs again urge the Commission to investigate whether
EU rules were breached by collaboration with the CIA programme."

Posted 19-7-13:
EU-CIA: Ex-CIA
Milan chief held in Panama over cleric abduction (BBC News, link) : "A
former CIA station chief convicted by an Italian court of kidnapping
a terror suspect has been detained in Panama, Italian officials
say. Robert Seldon Lady was sentenced to nine years in jail for
his involvement in the abduction of the man, an Egyptian cleric,
in Milan in 2003. The cleric, known as Abu Omar, was allegedly
flown to Egypt and tortured. Lady was convicted in absentia with
22 other Americans for their role in his "extraordinary
rendition" and CIA
official held in Panama over Italian snatch case (link)

Posted 26.7.12:
CIA-POLAND: European Court Seeks Answers from Poland on CIA Black
Site Case: "The European Court of Human Rights has
told Poland to provide it with information about a secret detention
site that operated on its territory in 2002 and 2003, in response
to an application filed by the Open Society Justice Initiative
on behalf of Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, a Saudi national now facing
capital charges before a U.S. military commission at Guantanamo
Bay. The courts detailed enquiries include seeking any
agreement on setting up and running a secret CIA prison
on Polish territory and other documentation" Full-text
of ECHR judgment (pdf)

Posted 14.2.12:
CIA
in Greenland: story about a polar whodunit (cafebabel, link): "Whats
aboard the CIA aeroplanes that have been illegally flying over
Greenland since 2001? That is what the Greenland government wants
the Danish authorities to tell them. They, however, seem oddly
reluctant to answer."

Posted 12.12.11:
CIA-ROMANIA: CIA
'secret prison' found in Romania - media reports (BBC News, link): "Former CIA
operatives said the building was used to interrogate terrorism
suspects, including Khaled Sheikh Mohammed....The CIA
operated a secret prison in the Romanian capital Bucharest where
terrorism suspects were interrogated, an investigation by the
Associated Press and German media has found."

Posted 30 November
2011: GERMANY: UN Committee concerned at failure to investigate
rendition and secret detention and the rendition of Khaled El-Masri:
Committee
against Torture: fifth periodic report of Germany: concluding
observations
(pdf) On 25 November, the UN Committee against Torture issued
its concluding observations on the compliance of Germany with
the international obligations under the Convention against Torture
and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment.
The Committee expressed concern at the lack of implementation
of the recommendations of the 2009 Parliamentary Inquiry on extraordinary
renditions and secret detention complicity. The Committee also
expressed at the failure to investigate and provide a remedy
for the rendition of Khaled El-Masri. See also: Denmark: Review
of US rendition flights over Greenland toothless (AI, press statement,
link) and Finland
must further investigate USA rendition flights(AI statement, link)

"In the
continuing absence o f any meaningful accountability in the USA,
and increasingly disturbing signs that the same may happen in
other European countries, the Lithuanian government should re-open
its criminal investigation into both its own involvement in these
operations, and that of the USA and its agents on Lithuanian
territory, and conduct an independent, impartial, thorough and
ef fective investigation that will serve as a model for accountability
across the region."

Renditions: Italy/Morocco:
Britel released from prison following pardon: On 18 April
2011, Abou Elkassim Britel's wife Khadija Anna Lucia Pighizzini
broke the long-awaited news that her husband, an "extraordinary
rendition" victim who had Italian citizenship and was kidnapped
in Pakistan in March 2002, was released from Kenitra prison on
14 April following a pardon granted by the King of Morocco, hopefully
putting an end to the family's ordeal.For
further news about the Britel case

European Parliament:
More
follow-up needed to secret rendition pracitces says report (Press release, pdf):
"A landmark investigation by the European Parliament
in 2007 on the use of European airspace for secret CIA rendition
flights has not been properly followed up. That's the finding
of Amnesty International report by Julia Hall and a related report
by former UN Special Rapporteur on Torture Manfred Nowak. A workshop
on human rights on Tuesday (25 January) debated what had been
learned from the original report by ex- MEP Claudio Fava."

Leaked Cables Cast Light on Bungled CIA
Kidnapping
(Inter Press Service, link): "the documents reveal that
U.S. officials, including the U.S. ambassador, William R. Timken
Jr., sharply warned Germany in 2007 not to enforce arrest warrants
for Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) officers involved in a
bungled operation in which an innocent German citizen with the
same name as a suspected militant was mistakenly kidnapped and
held for months in Afghanistan."

POLAND: CIA
detainee gets victim status

Warsaw Appellate Prosecutor granted victim status to Abd al-Rahim
al-Nashiri, a Saudi alleged terror suspect. This enables his
claim to demonstrate that he was mistreated by the CIA. Al-Nashiri
says he was transported by "Guantanamo taxi" to Poland
in December 2002 where he was to be held in a secret CIA site
in northeast Poland. Representing al-Nashiri, Polish law office
Pietrzak & Sidor in Warsaw demanded last September investigation
in the case of possible abuse of power by Polish public officials
in connection with the secret activities of the CIA and prosecution
of persons responsible for al-Nashiri's transfer and detention
in Poland. Source: Terror
suspect gets victim status in Polish probe (AP,link)

EU-CIA:
MEPs and AI reiterate call for action on CIA secret flights and
renditions
(pdf): "Amnesty International and MEPs Sarah Ludford
(ALDE, UK), Ana Gomes (SD, PT), Raul Romeva (Greens, ES), Willy
Meyer (GUE, ES) today called on European institutions and EU
Member States to take further action after recent developments
involving Europes role in the CIA rendition and secret
prison programme."

CIA RENDITION:
Polish authorities deny allegations of FOIA campaigners: Poland's
Ministry for Foreign Affairs denied statement of the Warsaw-based
Helsinki Foundation for Human Rights and the Open Society Justice
Initiative providing fresh
evidence
of cooperation between the Polish Government and the CIA on Renditions).
The Foreign Office spokesman described evidences presented by
FOIA campaigners as 'speculations' and called for 'restraint'
until the confidential investigation conducted by the National
Prosecution Office was closed. The investigation was launched
in August 2008 and, as a prosecutor in charge of the investigation
pointed out, 'it should not be expected to draw quickly near
the end'. Since 2006 Polish government officials have consequently
claimed that the allegations of their involvement in the secret
CIA rendition programme were unfounded. This time such a tough
stance is hardly reliable given that proves of at least six CIA
rendition flights which landed in Poland in 2003 have come from
official flight records made available by the Polish Air Navigation
Services Agency (PANSA). Documents: Polish
Air Navigation Services Agency (PANSA) flight logs; HFHR/OSJI Explanation
of Rendition Flight Records released by the Polish Air Navigation
Services Agency

1 November 2009:
UK-USA-CIA: Jet
named in torture flight report is met by SAS at British airport (Mail Online, link):
"A US plane that featured in a European Parliament report
into the 'extraordinary rendition' of terror suspects was met
by two SAS helicopters in a secret operation at one of Britain's
biggest airports. The Gulfstream jet landed at Birmingham International
Airport on Friday, October 2, having flown in from an undisclosed
location, and was seen by a member of staff being met minutes
later by the Special Forces regiment aircraft. Records show that
the jet is owned by a subsidiary of L-3 Communications, a multi-billion-dollar
defence corporation based in New York, whose clients include
several American government departments, among them the Department
of Homeland Security."

ITALY-CIA: Italy
seeks jail for US spies in rendition trial (Reuters, link): "An
Italian prosecutor called on Wednesday for 26 Americans, all
but one believed to be members of the CIA, to be jailed for between
10 and 13 years each for the kidnapping of a terrorism suspect
in 2003. Public Prosecutor Armando Spataro also asked a Milan
court to sentence four Italians, including the former head of
Italy's Sismi secret service, to up to 13 years in prison for
the abduction of Muslim cleric Hassan Mustafa Osama Nasr."

Portugal/CIA flights: In-depth
report:Investigation
"buries" Portuguese role in Guantánamo flights:
On 6 July 2009, Socialist party MEP Ana Gomes criticised the
investigation into flights to Guantánamo and rendition
flights that passed through Portugal, in response to the case
being shelved on 29 May 2009 because "no unlawful practices
of a criminal nature" were carried out in the "national
territory". Gomes claimed that the investigation appeared
to have the "political objective of burying the issue of
Portugal's role in the CIA flights" and filed a complaint
requesting that judicial investigations continue and new verifications
which had "inexplicably" not yet taken place be conducted
into the CIA flights to Guantánamo.

"Complicity in torture is a direct breach of the UKs
international human rights obligations. In our view, complicity
in torture exists where a state:
- asks a foreign intelligence service known to use torture to
detain and question an individual
- provides information to a foreign intelligence service known
to use torture, enabling that intelligence service to apprehend
an individual
- gives questions to a foreign intelligence service to put to
a detainee who has been, is being or is likely to be tortured
- sends interrogators to question a detainee who is known to
have been tortured by those detaining and interrogating him
- has intelligence personnel present at an interview with a detainee
in a place where he is being, or might have been tortured
- systematically receives information known or thought likely
to have been obtained from detainees subjected to torture."See: MPs
and peers call for inquiry into torture (Guardian, link)

"Today
the Court of Appeal delivered its judgment confirming that Mohamed
Raissi was falsely imprisoned by officers of the Metropolitan
Police when they arrested and detained him at Paddington Green
Police Station on 21 September 2001.
Mohamed Raissi is the brother of Lotfi Raissi who was wrongly
accused of training the 9/11 hijackers. The Court of Appeal confirmed
in February this year that Lotfi was completely exonerated
in a strongly worded judgement that was critical of the part
played by the Crown Prosecution Service and the Metropolitan
Police in the failed attempt to extradite him."

PORTUGAL-CIA
FLIGHTS: Jornal de Notícias, Portugal, 9.10.08.
Secret CIA flights: Along with other European countries,
Portugal granted fly-over rights in the past for CIA planes carrying
presumed Islamic terrorists. Portuguese Foreign Minister Luís
Amado explained yesterday that if Portugal's government has not
made a statement on the matter, it was to avoid prejudicing EU
Commission President José Manuel Barroso, who was Portuguese
prime minister at the time. Jornal de Notícias critices
this position: "Luís Amado is entirely right, Barroso
should be spared inconvenience. He is an important man in the
EU, and we are always proud when one of our emigrants is successful.
... As citizens, however, we have the right to know whether our
government was aware at least of this one flight between Guantánamo
and Cairo with a stop-over at the Portuguese military base [on
the Azores Islands]. ... We have the right to know if the government
authorised these flights or not, and if so under what conditions."
See also: REPRIEVE
submission to Portuguese Inquiry into rendition, 2 April 2008 (pdf)

SWEDEN: Ahmed
Agiza "rendered" by US agents from Sweden - although
still in prison in Egypt - to get compensation. Ahmed Agiza,
one of the two Egyptians who was "rendered" from Bromma
airport by US agents, with the assistance by the Swedish secret
service (security police) to Egypt, and there tortured and sentenced
to 25 years (later changed to 15 years) prison, is to get approximately
330,000 euro in damages from the Swedish state. He is still in
prison, and had demanded 35.000.000 Swedish crowns (about 4.000.000
euro) in damages, but now the Chancellor of Justice has come
to an agreement with his lawyer to accept 330.000 euro.

The decision to allow the rendition was taken by Anna Lindh (at
the time Minister for Foreign Affairs, later assassinated) and
Thomas Bodstram (Minister of Justice) and led to Sweden being
criticised by the UN
Committee against torture (pdf). The head of the Security Service
(SS) at the time, Klaes Bergenstrand (who was involved in the
Leander case, where he together with Hans Corell produced statements
that later forced the Government to give a public apology and
Leander appr 45.000  in tax free damages) died a couple
of years ago. Background: 1. Sweden:
Expulsions carried out by US agents, men tortured in Egypt; 2. Full-transcript
of "The broken promise", TV4, Monday 17 May 2004: Transcript
(pdf);
3. Ambassador's report: Report (in Swedish, 1.32 MB)
which includes the following: TV4:s translation of Embassy report
1, classified part on Page 2: 23 January 2002

UK: MI5 criticised
for role in case of torture, rendition and secrecy (Guardian,
link)

USA: RENDITION-TORTURE-US
ASSURANCES: Report from the UK House of Commons foreign Affairs
Committee: Human
Rights Annual Report 2007 (pdf). It includes the following Conclusions:

"We conclude
that, given the clear differences in definition, the UK can no
longer rely on US assurances that it does not use torture, and
we recommend that the
Government does not rely on such assurances in the future."

"We conclude
that it is extremely important that the veracity of allegations
that the Government has outsourced interrogation
techniques involving the torture of British nationals by Pakistani
author authorities should be ities investigated."

"We conclude
that the Government has a moral and legal obligation to ensure
that flights that enter UK airspace or land at UK airports are
not pa part of the rendition
rt circuit, even if they do not have a detainee on board
during the time they are in UK territory. We recommend that the
Government should immediately raise questions about such flights
with the US authorities in order to ascertain the full scale
of the rendition problem, and inform the Committee of the replies
it rece receives in its response ives to this Report."

MASRI-UN-MACEDONIA:
The UN Committee against Torture (CAT) and the Human Rights Committee
(HRC) have advised the Macedonia government to undertake a new
and thorough investigation into the abduction and ill-treatment
of Mr Khaled El-Masri when held by CIA agents in secret detention:

EU countries obstructing investigations into CIA
renditions, report says (euobserver, link) "The "most important"
of the CIA's secret detention prisons, or 'black sites', in the
years immediately following the 11 September attacks was situated
in Szymany, some 160km north of Warsaw, according to officers
with the US intelligence service. In a weekend article in the
New York Times newspaper, unnamed CIA officers tell of one of
the presumed dozens of sites, hitherto vehemently denied by the
Polish government as having been located within the country."

"The
European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights (ECCHR),
Berlin, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), and the Open
Society Justice Initiative (OSJI), both based in New York, met
today in Berlin with lawyers from Germany, Macedonia and the
United Kingdom to discuss the latest developments in the CIA
rendition case of German citizen Khaled El Masri.

ECCHR filed today a lawsuit against the German Government at
the Berlin administration court for its failure to demand the
extradition of 13 CIA agents suspected of having illegally rendered
Mr. El Masri from Macedonia to a US prison in Kabul, Afghanistan."

USA-UK: Homeland
Security's Chertoff, Britain's Interior Minister Discuss Travel
Security Issues (US
Mission in the EU, link) Mr Chertoff was asked about reported
US demands that it will require passenger details for all flights
from the EU over-flying the USA. His response is interesting
in the context of the difficulties faced by the European Parliament
and the Council of Europe requesting information from EU governments
on over-flying CIA flights: "Under the Chicago Convention,
which I think goes back almost 50 years, anybody who wants to
come into the airspace of a country has to submit to the rules
and regulations of the country whose airspace they're entering,
whether its to land or to overfly. We generally require,
and will require, under a program called Secure Flight: name,
passport number, and maybe one or two other items of information
from the manifest of anybody who is going to overfly the United
States  and thats pursuant to this international
arrangement.

"The
report concludes that diplomatic assurances received from the
US Government are not sufficient for Ireland to satisfy its human
rights obligations with regard to the issue of extraordinary
rendition flights passing through Irish territory.

The Commission
recommends that an effective inspection regime be put in place
to ensure that no foreign aircraft which might be suspected of
involvement in the illegal practice of extraordinary rendition
may land and refuel in Ireland. An effective inspection regime
will ensure that no prisoners are transited through the State
en route to a situation of torture or inhuman or degrading treatment
or punishment."

Council of
Europe's Anti-Torture Committee denounces secret detention: "Strasbourg, 14.09.2007
- In its 17th General Report published today, the CPT denounces
secret detention, an illegal practice that has been resorted
to in particular in the context of the fight against terrorism.
Secret detention amounts in itself to ill-treatment and 
due to the removal of fundamental safeguards which it entails
- inevitably heightens the risk of resort to other forms of ill-treatment.
Responding to reports that certain secret detention facilities
were located in European countries, the CPT invites anyone who
is in possession of information concerning such facilities to
bring it to the attention of the Committee.

The CPT also
comments on the related issue of extra-judicial transfers from
one country to another, so-called "renditions". The
Committee is particularly concerned by the practice of rendition
for the purposes of detention and interrogation outside the normal
criminal justice system. "Operations of this kind inevitably
involve a risk of ill-treatment for the person concerned that
no 'assurances' can ever fully remove; it follows that the authorities
of Parties (to the European Convention for the Prevention of
Torture) should never offer assistance in the context of such
operations". (CoE, press release)

- in the case
of Bisher al-Rawi and Jamil el-Banna where UK agencies provided
evidence to the USA with the caveat "speicifcally prohibiting
any action being taken - this was disregarded by the USA and
Bisher al-Rawi and Jamil el-Banna triggered their arrest and
"Rendition to Detention". Moreover, the Security Service
failed to tell Ministers about their relationship with Bisher
al-Rawi and that it: "took*** years, and a court
case, to bring it to their attention"

- the SIS (MI6) and Security Service (MI5) were "slow"
to appreciate the "change in US rendition policy":
"the Agencies should have detected the emerging pattern
of renditions sooner and used greater caution in working with
the U.S. at an earlier stage."

- "in
fighting international terrorism it is clear that the U.S. will
take whatever action it deems is necessary, within U.S. law,
to protect its national security.
Although the U.S. may take note of UK protests and concerns,
it does not appear materially to affect their strategy"

- the Committee had difficulties in a number of areas getting
information: GCHQ (Government Communications Headquarters, which
runs - with NSA - a global communications surveillance system)
passed intelligence to the US National Security Agency (NSA)
which could have passed it to the CIA. The Committee simply had
to accept that the GCHQ-NSA agreement that this required "explicit
permission" actually worked. Similarly "General Aviation
Reports" on flight plans "appears to be systematically
flawed" so complete data on flights was not available.

- the Committee recommends that despite "caveats and assurances"
any future requests which could lead to rendition should be referred
to Ministers for approval.

In the most comprehensive
accounting to date, six leading human rights organisations today
published a briefing paper revealing the names and details of
39 people who are believed to have been held in secret US custody
and whose current whereabouts remain unknown.

The list - drafted by Amnesty International, Cageprisoners, the
Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR), the Center for Human
Rights and Global Justice at New York University School of Law,
Human Rights Watch, and Reprieve - provides new names of missing
detainees, new information about those known to be disappeared,
and names relatives of suspects who were themselves detained
in secret prisons, including children as young as seven.

ITALY-CIA-RENDITION:
Americans
and Italians are indicted in CIA kidnapping case (International Herald
Tribune, link) MILAN, Italy: An Italian judge on Friday indicted
26 Americans and five Italians for what will be the first criminal
trial over the CIA's extraordinary rendition program. The judge
set a trial date for June 8. Prosecutors allege that five Italian
intelligence officials worked with the Americans - almost all
CIA agents - to abduct terror suspect Osama Moustafa Hassan Nasr
from a Milan street on Feb. 17, 2003.

UPDATE: EP: The
European Parliament has adopted (14 February 2007) a highly critical
report on CIA renditions and detentions and on the activities
of a number of EU governments including the UK, Austria, Italy,
Poland and Portugal. The report: "gives detailed evidence
of investigations of illegal rendition or CIA flight cases involving
Germany, Sweden, Spain, Ireland, Greece, Cyprus, Denmark, Turkey,
the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia (FYROM), Bosnia and
Romania." Full-text
of the European Parliament Resolution adopted on 14 February
2007 on CIA rendition and detention (pdf) Press release
on the CIA rendition debate and amendments agreed (pdf). Excellent summary
in Working Document no 9 of the key evidence (eg: cases and flights)
gathered on Italy, UK, Germany, Sweden, Austria, Spain, Portugal,
Ireland, Greece, Macedonia, Bosnia Herzegovina, Romania and Poland
to back up the Resolution above: Evidence
gathered on key EU states - CIA rendition and detention (pdf) This should be
read in conjunction with: Working Document
no 7
(extraordinary renditions) and Working Document
no 8:
Companies working for the CIA and stop-overs in the EU. Tony
Bunyan, Statewatch editor, comments: "The European Parliament's
committee of inquiry has done a great public service in gathering
evidence to show not just the extent of CIA renditions through
and abductions in the EU but also the collusion - by "turning
a blind eye" - of EU governments. This have been achieved
with little or no help from the other EU institutions (European
Commission and the Council of the European Union)."

USA, UK, Germany,
Spain and Italy have refused to sign up to the UN Convention
on banning disappearences and secret detention. Fifty-seven countries
joined at the treaty signing in Paris on 6 February 2007. The
Covention was adopted by the general assembly on 20 December
2006 and becomes operational when a minimum of 20 states have
ratified it. The International Convention for the Protection
of All Persons and Enforced Disappearance places an "absolute
ban" on on secret detentions, provides for tracing the whereabouts
of the "disappeared" and for the right of reparation.
France led the initiative for the Convention and its officials
estimated that 51,000 people have been disappeared by governments
in over 90 countires since 1980. International
Convention for the Rptection of All Persons and Enforced Disappearance
- full-text
(pdf) UN
press release
(pdf) US
refuses to sign UN ban on renditions and secret detention (World Socialist Website,
link)

Italy: Renditions:
Abu Omar freed in Egypt: Rendition victim Hassan Mustafa
Osama Nasr, aka Abu Omar, was released on 11 February 2007 from
Tora high security prison in the outskirts of Cairo. He was kidnapped
on 17 February 2003 in Milan, in a case that has resulted in
arrest warrants being issued against 13 CIA officers and charges
being brought against Nicolò Pollari, the head of the
Italian military secret service (SISMI), and other high-level
SISMI officials. Abu Omar's Egyptian lawyer noted that the depression
that he had experienced in prison had led to three suicide attempts,
and his wife, Nabila, expressed her happiness while noting that
"He is happy but tired the prison and torture have
deeply marked him. They have changed him". (Repubblica,
12.2.2007).

GERMANY-CIA RENDITION:
A German court in Munich has issued arrest warrants for 13 CIA
agents involved in the kidnapping and rendition of Khaled al-Masri
who was abducted in 2003 in Macedonia, flown to a secret prison
in Afghanistan and tortured: Speigel
Online
(link) and BBC
News
(link).

Sweden: UN Human
Rights Committee finds that Sweden broke the international prohibition
against torture. The case concerned the rendition of two Egyptians
from Sweden 2001 by undercover US and Egyptian agents. The UN
Committee also states that the treatment of the two men on Swedish
soil (Bromma Airport in Sweden) in connection with the rendition
was a breach of the ban on torture and inhuman treatment: Full
text of: UN
Human Rights Committee Decision, 6 November 2006

EU-CIA-Inquiry:
Former
Guantanamo detainee meets MEPs investigating CIA renditions (European Parliament
press release). "When Murat Kurnaz - a German resident of
Turkish origin - travelled to Pakistan in late 2001 to "find
himself and deepen his faith", he told MEPs on Wednesday,
he was arrested by the Pakistani police. "They caught me
and sold me to the Americans for 3,000 or 5,000 dollars,"
he said. Mr Kurnaz was transferred to a prison in Afghanistan
and later flown to Guantanamo, where he remained until August
this year when he was released without charge.

CIA-Rendition:
European Commission for Democracy through Law (Venice Commission)
Extraordinary
rendition - a European Perspective" speech by Olivier Dutheillet
de Lamothe (Substitute member, France) (Cardozo School of Law,
25 September 2006 - "Bauer Lecture")

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